ly as the best friend you have. Don't run the risk of a horrible
disappointment. I know you wouldn't find that easy to bear--it would be
bad for you, in every way.

Impelled by annoyance--for the project seemed to him delusive, and his
sense of dignity rose against it--Harvey had begun with unwonted
decision, but he was soon uncomfortably self-conscious and
self-critical; he spoke with effort, vainly struggling against that
peculiar force of Alma's personality which had long ago subdued him.
When he looked at her, saw her distant smile, her pose of the head as
in one who mildly rebukes presumption, he was overcome with a feeling
of solemn ineptitude. Quite unaware that his last sentence was to Alma
the most impressive--the only impressive--part of his counsel, suddenly
he broke off, and found relief in unexpected laughter.

'There now, I've done my duty--I've discharged the pedagogue. Get rid
of your tragic mask. Be yourself; do as you wish. When the time comes,
just tell me what you have decided.'

So, once more, did he oust common-sense with what he imagined a riper
wisdom. One must not take things funereally. Face to face with a woman
in the prime of her beauty, he heard a voice warning him against the
pedantic spirit of middle age, against formalism and fogeyishness.

'Now I know you again,' said Alma, softening, but still reserved; for
she did not forget that he had thrown doubt upon her claims as an
artist--an incident which would not lose its importance as she pondered
it at leisure.

Harvey sat late. On going upstairs, instead of straightway entering his
own room, he passed it with soft step and paused by another door, that
of the chamber in which Hughie slept under the care of Miss Smith. The
child had coughed in the night during this last week. But at present
all was quiet, and with comfortable reassurance the father went to rest.

Alma had matters to occupy her more important than a child's passing
ailment. As she slowly unrobed herself by the fire, combed out her
warm, fragrant, many-rippled tresses, or held mute dialogue with her
eyes in the glass, from a ravel of uneasy thoughts there detached
itself, first and foremost, the discovery that Redgrave had not been in
Paris when Mrs. Strangeways said he was. What was the meaning of this
contradiction? Thereto hung the singular coincidence of Redgrave's
return home exactly at the time when she and Mrs. Strangeways happened
to be there. She had thought of